Now that we have a dedicated section of the forums for the badass punk Siren, I’m hoping we can all share ideas for builds we may have. I’ve shared a build or two in other places so I’ll show off another one to kick things off. I’ve got a build in the picture below that revolves around melee/elemental damage and locking down foes to make closing the distance much easier before all hell breaks loose. I’m currently thinkin’ of going fire damage for my AS/melee damage and using an electric/corrosive gun so I can take out their shields/armor before laying into their health with a nice warm slap to the face. Probably gonna also use Ties that Bind with Allure so I can bunch everyone up before beating them down. I imagine this build will be best for trash mobs duty, but that’s something I enjoy doing in RPGs.
They sure as heck ain’t mine, but if you’re lookin’ for the fan-made interactive skill trees, you can find them here: https://bl3skills.com/
UPDATE: 19 Aug '19
Been playing with builds and since the official ISTs are out I’mma update these with my new favored builds.
Amara’s Do Harm and Violent Tapestry skills have me a tad worried since I’m not certain how easy it’ll be to keep stacks high to make the most of them. I have invested in Violent Tapestry to hopefully make it easier to gain stacks since you can gain them on enemy kill or applying a status effect… at least, I think that’s how it works, lol. On the whole, I’ve focused on the Mystical Assault tree to get the most of her action skill and skills which enhance said action skills.
I’ve chosen Deliverance as the preferred action skill and, while I don’t believe the elemental projectiles will count towards the “damage inflicted” by the AS, I do believe it’ll grant a head start on Rush stacks for the next AS activation. Remnant should also help with that since it acts like Deliverance except on-kill. Brawl is the second tree choice primarily to give Amara some tanking capabilities. While her health regen is primarily from Soul Sap, Clarity and Samsara add to that regen. The other skills are meant to help mitigate damage and since the build is focused on using the action skill frequently that means that **Helping Hand(s) will be active frequently granting 40% damage reduction. Through the use of Avatar it may even be possible to have the 40% damage reduction active nigh constantly. I have considered going full offence and investing in *Fist of the Elements instead of Brawl, but that’ll be in another build.
So my original goal was to min max the rush mechanic from the phasecast (blue) tree. So the first thing I looked at is how can I make Rush as reliable as possible and Violent Tapestry is key to this. Get stacks from applying elemental effects and get higher chance to apply elemental effects from it. The only other source is from kills and while I’m sure this will be a good source much of the time, Bosses are important and don’t always have reliable adds to gank for stacks. Beyond that Do Harm, Alacrity, Awakening and the capstone double action skill use all play into stacking up and burning rush as much as possible. Laid Bare is also an obvious choice here because of the frequency with which the capstone allows use of Amara’s action skill.
For action skill I like Deliverance because it helps stack rush. Augment I’d go with Soul Sap because this build doesn’t have much defense elsewhere and there is no downside to using the augment.
For action skill element I recommend using fire with shock weapons. This maximizes Tempest while still hitting two weaknesses with Infusion. Anima is obviously just a good choice for boosting damage output when you are focusing on elemental effects. I am stopping at level 50 because I think it is the highest we can reasonably theorycraft at this point based on previous games. The rest of my talent choices I think are obvious with Sustainment being the best choice for that level 50 point because there is a huge difference in health recovery between no life leech and any existing life leech.
This is my above rush build but with the phaseslam tree instead of the elemental tree. The rush aspect remains the same. The elemental tree contributes a lot in the other build but doesn’t actually make rush itself better.
One big thing I love about this build is Samsara with the double action skill. You can use it with any of the offensive action skills though I think you can reliably get more stacks from Downfall or Deliverance. The augment Revelation, which makes your action skill cause enemies to give off a nova, is potentially very potent here. Previous examples of making a nova happen on enemies has made the nova hit the original target as well. If this nova counts as coming from the action skill the nova could add stacks of Samsara. Add that Downfall and Deliverance appear to do multiple hits that potentially could nova and we might be able to get a lot of stacks even from a single enemy like a boss.
Damage potential is about equal to the elemental tree but with the short range requirement. In exchange it gets a bunch of good defensive talents and much more health regen.
It is worth noting that this build has a lot to gain for getting points beyond level 50. Jab Cross and Anima are both ready to be picked up and would be a huge gain. I don’t get them in this version because I’d have to give up Avatar and Awakening which goes against the blue tree/rush focus of the build.
Pretty much what Im going for, but I got gun damage and CDR instead of fire rate and reload speed.
Im pretty sure that we are going to get a COM dedicated to Rush related skills and it is going to be amazing.
Hey vizinho, If you are going to play as Hellborn Amara I have to play a Catalyst one! Hahaha
1 Like
sammantixbb
(I guess no one goes here anymore)
#11
Hm. I was just thinking about the synergy of Eternal Fist, Stillness Of Mind, and Dread. Dread is from Fist and what it does is increase gun damage during Grasp, and if the grasped enemy is killed, auto reloaded weapon.
This means, with a proper shot, one could unload a very long stream of Maliwan SMG bullets.
1 Like
narfkeks
(May this forum rest in peace - Davin Dittrich)
#12
This is basically “Projectile Spam: The Build” as I’ll be going with “Deliverance” as my Action Skill and “Remnant” as passive extra damage. My guess is that the Deliverance projectiles proc “Stillness of Mind”, which should give me a lot of crowd control. If they don’t then I’ll use “Reverberation” or the classy “Phaseslam” instead (and maybe “Allure” on higher levels), depending on what fits my playstyle the most. At level 50 I have Access to all 3 Action Skill Elements, which gives me versatility and thanks to the CC elements this Build should be a blast to play.
That was very similar to my initial idea for Amara. I cam curious how Stillness works with the extra projectiles. I’m guessing that the projectiles go towards the enemy they spawned because of, but I guess we won’t know for certain for a while.
I have another build I fiddled with just a minute ago. More of a Survivalist build going for the tank role of the group. Going for frequent AS usage with Soul Sap and Deliverance to maximize the active healing potential and damage reduction from ***Helping Hand(s)***. Still a work in progress, but I’m looking forward to testing it out.
narfkeks
(May this forum rest in peace - Davin Dittrich)
#14
Survival is the biggest weakness of my build, at least until Lv 30+, when I can get my hands on “Clarity”. “Sustainment” will solve that issue in the end, but at that point I’m already at Level 60+. I play almost exclusively solo, but in a group setting I’d be the one for Crowd Control with my build.
But Amara can be a great tank as well, especially her Melee/FotE builds seem to get absurd with all the sources of regen, damage reduction and lifesteal.
I’m thinking the dot from “Deliverance” will break “Stillness of Mind”.
narfkeks
(May this forum rest in peace - Davin Dittrich)
#16
If those were set in place by getting hit with the initial attack, yes. But those that weren’t hit by the blast, but the homing projectiles of Deliverance might get phaselocked. Or at least that’s what I hope.
I know we’ll all be min-maxing things with mods in due time (hoping for a bit of tweaking on how they work, given that we have 3 point skills now and they’re back to restricting to maxing out a certain number of points to get to the next tier down) but some of the percentage numbers seem a bit… odd, for what they do.
Like her From Rest Skill, assuming its been shown correctly, sports a HUGE 78% reduction on charge up time for Maliwan weapons (which unless they tweak them before launch will be sorely needed for how slow they’ve shown to charge in gameplay) but only a slight 12% boost to Fire Rate. Again, assuming they might change things for the launch, but I’ve seen similarly strange numbers on Zane as well.
I’m seriously having an hard time going down the Fist of the Elements tree because there are so many skills I want to pick… Wish I could pick “Wildfire” too. I guess it’ll come down to how many points we’ll need in “Sustainment” - the life steal skill. If the game is like BL2, where damage done to enemies is significantly larger than our health pool, 2-3 points could be enough (8% - 12% conversion). This entire tree has me in awe btw, it’s like any Maya’s player wet dream. Unconditional Life Tap and Chain Reaction (“Indiscriminate”)? Yes please! Actual +elemental damage (and conversion) instead of just +DoT chance? Enemies exploding when they have DoT? Where do I sign?
I go for the Brawl tree next because of survivability, the possibility to switch the Action Skill to corrosive damage, and also are some skills that seems really juicy there.
“Personal Space”: The way this skill is worded “shots deal 33% bonus damage” as opposed to “increased X% gun damage” (like on any other skill) makes me think it could be multiplicative. If that’s the case, it seems pretty damn strong for a tier 1 skill and only 3 points investment, especially if you like to play up close and personal (which I do).
“Mindfulness”: at 3/3 is +4.2% Movement Speed and -7.5 Shield Regen Delay… PER STACK. Max stack is 25. At 14 stacks the Shield Regen Delay goes to -105% right? Does this mean the shield will have no delay, so constantly recharging? Sure, “stacks decay quickly” (it says 5 seconds as duration), but it still seems bonkers to me. Not to mention the movement speed, which I love. Bonus points if they put in some guns that have some sort of self-damage mechanic (ie the Orphan Maker from BL2).
“Guardian Angel” well, not much to say about that.
“Samsara” sounds good but Ties That Bind in itself shouldn’t be doing any damage to enemies, so the skill wouldn’t trigger. If the number of Phasegrasp-immune enemies through the game is significant (I really hope not) I could change my mind.
